2014-08-08

Modern Alpinism

I am back from a 2+ week vacance in the French Alps —the first since 2009. More specifically, the first since the DVLA took away my driving license on the basis that I was medically unfit to drive. They now consider me no more dangerous than anyone else, so we could drive down there. My main issue with driving now is that I've forgotten things: motorway awareness, the width of my car (very important in bristol), what it feels like to go round corners fast enough for car to indicate through the steering wheel that it doesn't want to —and worst of all, how to parallel park into small gaps.

Two weeks in the French Alps, along with 2-day approaches/retreats is a good revision there, giving me the learning matrix of

Day

Night

Bad Weather

Autoroute

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French village

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French urban (excluding Paris)

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Windy country roads

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Alpine passes

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There's a few left, and I didn't try any overtakes, but otherwise that's reasonable coverage of the configuration space.

While there: MTB work, some on-road work including a 100 mile epic, a bit of basic Alpine hut hiking/scrambling —as well as staying with friends, eating too many cheese-based products (tartiflettes &c), consuming french beer and cidre, catching the Tour de France Chamrousse Stage and generally having fun.

I got to review some of the places last visited in 2009:

Where I'm pleased to see that I don't seem significantly rounder

The main difference this time was that someone was rinsing their clothes in this village fountain half-way up Col du Barrioz, so we had to sprint off before we got harassed, crossing the pass and sheltering from some rain in a bar/tabac where I opted to not drink that day